The public at large perceive diplomatic immunity as a get out of jail free card. We see incidents in the news of diplomats caught up in nefarious activities or in compromising situations and then seemingly avoid the legal process that would inevitably follow if it were one of us.

While it may seem unfair on the surface, the agreement between governments is there to smooth foreign relations and to offer our overseas personnel the same protections. It isn’t used as an excuse to misbehave and avoid the law. It is used to provide a framework within which we can secure our people while working abroad.

So What is Diplomatic Immunity?

Diplomatic immunity protects the location of a diplomatic mission from search. Diplomatic personnel are immune from criminal prosecution as well as most civil lawsuits in the host country.

In return, the diplomatic personnel must respect the laws and regulations of their host country. It isn’t a get out of jail free card. It can be revoked at any time, and the government of the diplomat can choose to cooperate in any prosecution of their staff if the case is compelling enough.

If a diplomat breaks the law, the home country can revoke a diplomat’s immunity and allow the host country to prosecute. Most countries are reluctant to take this step though. Diplomats most often face disciplinary or legal proceedings at home instead. This is often carried out with the agreement of the host country, to ensure some kind of justice prevails.

The Reality

Despite what the media would like us to believe, diplomatic immunity is rarely invoked. The diplomatic community is usually a very well behaved one, and few instances of crime is ever discovered or reported.

According to government statistics, diplomatic immunity has only been invoked 147 times in the last 6 years. Most of these were for minor offenses, mainly shoplifting. So while the diplomatic community is generally a wealthy one, they have somewhat sticky fingers.

It is apparently extremely rare that diplomatic immunity is used in more serious cases. Or it’s kept secret when it happens. The most serious incidents seem to be in financial cases. The accounts if diplomatic personnel are covered under the legal immunity, so it can be difficult for creditors to pursue debtors if they have this legal status.

So while Hollywood loves to spin a yarn, the reality of any given situation isn’t always as it is portrayed. The legal status of a diplomat may be protected from the full might of the law, but it isn’t without its own punishments.

The US has agreements with most countries that allows for punishments for individuals in their own jurisdictions, and this agreement allows for our own people to face justice here too.

All these things will depend on the actual demand of the Beverly Hills furnished apartments or Denver Apartments market in any area. One thing is certain, people will need a place to live. But determining if it’s an area that would be an investors dream (where the need for rental property is high) or for the home owners (better neighborhoods, more affluent lifestyles, etc.) helps to know what type of housing is needed and wanted.

The level of income in any area really determines fully the housing market. If an area has a good economy, the level of income is higher, housing demands would be more for home owners. This would be a good area for investors who want to develop residential areas to sell. Or for individual buyers to claim their homes. Real estate in these areas tend to be more valued. The occasional investor may hit upon a few rental properties, but this would be more for the owners.

Investors do well to look in areas where rental properties are desired. Areas where there may be young families just starting out. Areas where the jobs aren’t top-end, but more so people will be working and moving on after a time. Or areas high in immigration, where the demand is great for immediate housing, but the resources aren’t available for these to buy.

In Wadomo, we enforce writting reusable code when possible. This means that we can use it in our future projects, but also that all the developers out there can use it and improve it at the same time. Win-win situation that has been the base for the open source community since the early days.

A common problem that arises within web projects is how to save geographical data about our users. We always like to know where users are located, so we can target them with more localized information and recommendations.

Our goal was to easily add this information in our views, and to be able to have an autocomplete field with all the cities in the world with just one html tag, simple and clean.

Long time ago, we used to create big, annoying and unmaintainable relational tables in our databases, trying to solve this problem. Now, we can use some of the online services that companies like Google or Yahoo offers. After testing some of these services, we decided to use Yahoo Geo and we are very pleased about the obtained results.

To make our life easier, we have developed a Ruby on Rails plugin, and of course you can use it too! This plugin will include jQuery in your project (if you haven’t done it yet) so please make sure that you are not using Prototype, because it could create conflicts with your code.

The first thing that you have to do is register yourself in Yahoo Geo for an API_KEY. After that, you’re ready to install our plugin.

Using a console, go to your rails app dir and type:

script/plugin install git://github.com/wadomo/geo_yahoo.git

Now, check if  you have included the default javascript files in your layout. If don’t, include this line in your views layaout:

<%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>

The last thing, is add your API_KEY in your config/environment.rb file. Be sure that you include this line just before the last “end” of the file.

ENV['YAHOO_API'] = “yourapikeyhere”

That’s it! You’ve got it!

This is just the start of the many advantages and uses that Lanyards have. There are a number of uses for lanyards for camping, as an example. A lanyard can secure equipment or tools that you frequently use to the outside of a back pack, so they are handy but out of the way. You can use neck lanyards to hold a compass, so you always know where you are. A neck lanyard can hold a fire starter, close to your body so it is always dry, and ready to use. They can be used to keep a lantern high on a post, or to keep axes and other equipment close at hand at a campsite but out of the way.

A lanyard also has other advantages. In law enforcement, a lanyard is often used to keep an officer’s badge out and handy, around their neck. This is important, especially if they are presented with a situation that requires them to identify themselves, and still keep their hands free for holding a gun, flashlight, or a combination of the two. A badge lanyard can hold the badge in place, in a location that is easily seen without interfering with the officer.

Lanyards are also valuable tools at sporting events, concerts and conventions. Having one around the neck can be used to display identification, whether it is security badge, or even to keep track of people who have tickets. If you use a lanyard to hold your ticket around your neck, you don’t have to keep taking it out of your pocket, or risking it being stolen be some one else. Lanyards are also widely used at meetings and conventions, in order to identify employees, speakers, and other people. This way, a person doesn’t have to constantly be saying their name, or the company they work for.

Lanyards have many advantages around the home or office. They can be used to keep a person’s glasses from falling off, or to keep scissors or other tools close at hand, without having to hold them all the time. At the office, they can keep pens or pencils from disappearing, or be used to hold onto paper clips and such. This way, commonly used items, those that are constantly being misplaced, can be at hand, and easy to use.

Just about anything can be classified as a lanyard. A bungee cord, a chain that connects your keys or wallet to your belt, the loop on a camera or cell phone can be classified as a lanyard.

You can buy a number of different styles of lanyards. Some companies use lanyards to advertise their products and services with the company name or logo permanently printed on the material. These advertising gimmicks can be purchased in bulk, from a number of different resources. They can also be advantageous for schools and other organizations for inexpensive fund raising projects.

Historical

Ayittey, George B.N. – Africa Unchained—Blueprint for Africa’s Future
2005, Current Analysis

Diamond, Jared – Guns, Germs & Steel
1999 The World as it developed

Hochschild, Adam – King Leopold’s Ghost
1999, “A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa”

Mandela, Nelson – Long Walk to Freedom
Autobiographical, 1994, South Africa

Parkenham, Thomas – Scramble for Africa
1991 Africa and Europe, 1876 to 1912

Personal Experience and Report

Burgess, Alan – Daylight Must Come
Biographical 1975, D R Congo

Cotlow, Lewis – Zanzabuku (Dangerous Safari)
1956, East Africa

Easterly, William: The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done so Much Ill and so Little Good
2006, A very readable insiders view of the workings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund with a helpful critique of their misguided and unsuccessful efforts.

Kyemba, Henry – A State of Blood
1974, Uganda, Idi Amin

Maathai, Wangari: Unbowed
2006, The Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2004 writes of her efforts to involve thousands of women in planting millions of trees in the Green Belt Movement. Her chief opposition came from her own Kenyan government and she realized the importance of building democratic processes. Every activist who dreams of establishing democracies in the developing countries should read this book. The message is that it must be done on the inside. It can’t be done by outsiders. It would be well for this book to be read by every American woman. It is on a par with Nelson Mandela’s autobiography.

Nazer, Mende & Lewis, Damien – Slave, My True Story
2003, Contemporary, Sudan

Owens, Mark & Delia – Cry of the Kalahari
1984, Botswana

Theroux, Paul – Dark Star Safari
2003, Overland from Cairo to Capetown

Van der Post, Lauren – Lost World of the Kalahari
Botswana, the San or Bushmen, A Classic, 1958

Novels

Kingsolver, Barbara – The Poisonwood Bible
1999 D.R. Congo

Paton, Alan Paton – Cry the Beloved Country
1948, South Africa and Apartheid

Smith, Alex. McCall: The #1 Ladies Detective Agency, 1998
also: . . . . . . . . . . . Tears of the Giraffe, 2000
The first 2 books of a delightful and popular series taking place in Botswana. The 8th in the series “The Good Husband of Zebra Drive” has been released in April of 2007.

** To receive a thumbnail sketch of any of the above books, refer to the author of these games. See the contact page of this website.

Introducing a unique geography card game patterned
after the famous games of Authors and Go Fish:

Go Travel: Africa

Learn about the fascinating continent of Africa while enjoying the company of family and friends. Not a quiz game! All of our games can be enjoyed by all generations—whatever their beginning level of knowledge.

Travel-by-Games 52 colorful cards, each displaying the map of one African country with a few basic geographic features, original photos, and replicas of stamps. There are 13 color-coded regional groups. The object of the game is to draw and exchange cards with other players to make complete sets of 4 countries of one region. Read more!

Learn about our other new games. Check out our additional resources. Thank you for visiting! Your feedback is welcome.